A Trucker's Tale – Trucks of the Past

Jun 19, 2024 - 2 years ago

In this edition of A Trucker’s Tale, Ed Miller rates the pros and cons of some trucks from over the years. Surely there are many among you who remember driving these trucks!

A Trucker's Tale - Truck of the Past — *Mack H*

Pardon me as I (once again) diverge from the usual military theme, but writing about an Autocar tractor I drove in Vietnam got me thinking about some of the great older trucks we can now only view at truck shows, fairs, or on the internet.

Older drivers either have fond memories of the old trucks, or they still remember the embarrassment of having to drive them! Some of the old trucks, with which I am familiar, are the following:

Mack B61

One of the most well-known Mack models, ever. Also, the first truck I drove on the highway. The B61 was so well built that many were still hauling freight when they had over a million miles on them.

Mack H Model

Regular H model had one large headlight on each fender. I’m pretty sure the H67 was the first Mack to have dual headlights. The leather boot, at the bottom of and surrounding the two stick-shifts, never stayed tight, and they became dried-out or torn. While traveling, air movement made it possible to breathe. When sitting still, or idling while in the bunk, the improperly functioning boot would damned-near choked a driver to death with the exhaust fumes getting into the cab.

Both B61 and H Models

Most drivers had installed small convex mirrors on top of their truck’s right-side mirror. The mirrors were angled upward, which would allow the driver to observe (when the truck was “running right”) the blue flame of the fire coming out of the smokestack. Sure as hell, that’s a sight we don’t get to see these days.

Mack F Model

To me the F model was the ugliest tractor Mack ever built. Not a single one of Obie’s drivers wanted to drive the one he had owned for a short time.

White 7400 Series

The widest truck I ever drove. Also, every trucker I’ve ever spoken with concerning the 7400 agreed that the single stick of the Roadranger transmission developed an excessive amount of play after several hundred thousand miles. When changing gears, a driver would have to move the stick around until he found the gear he was looking for. When I was 18, I had just made a furniture pick-up in Shelby, NC. Heading out of Shelby toward my next pick-up, I had just “found” 10th gear and was probably going too fast for the two-lane road. As I rounded a long curve, two police were waving trucks over for inspection. When the one (who was going to wave me in) saw how fast I was going, he stepped off the roadway and motioned for me to keep on trucking. Whew, another close one!

International Emeryville

I have very fond memories of this Cornbinder. One of Obie’s Emeryville’s had a 220 Cummins engine. Now I’m not very engine savvy, but I remember being told that the engine had a “back-draft manifold.” Whatever it did have, the truck emitted a sound you could not get enough of. The perfect sound was when the engine was lugging, especially while traveling heavily loaded up a long, moderate incline. In the hills of Western NC, this engine could be heard for miles, and there was no mistaking the fact that the engine was a 220 Cummins. Additionally, this sound somewhat resembled the deep, guttural pup-pup-pup-pup exhaust sound made by an older John Deere farm tractor.

Ford 9000

What can you say? Ford has always made good pickup trucks. Did not make a very good tractor. I think Ford tried to outdo the ugly F model Mack with this one.

GMC Cracker box

Anyone who has ever driven one of these, after McLean Trucking wore-it-out, remembers several things about the tractor. The dog box was hotter than hell; the exhaust fumes coming in the cab were just as strong as what came out of the stack; and after driving it for 10 hours, the ringing in your ears after listening to the screaming Detroit Diesel 318. Most everyone I ever spoke with about the Cracker boxes told me they were embarrassed as hell to drive them. I certainly do agree with that assessment.

The slow, loud, and hot trucks used through the years have led to powerful, ultra-quiet, high-tech, and highly efficient trucks on the road today. After remembering the aforementioned trucks, I continued thinking of the many tractor makes and models we oldsters drove. I hope these trucks bring back as many memories for you as they did for me. (I don’t just suggest good memories, since some of them were aggravating sons-of-bitches to drive.) I apologize for my exclusion of the fine past models of Peterbilts and Kenworths, but I am not familiar enough with them to even attempt to include them.

Autocar
Brockway
Chevrolet: not much difference from the GMC, except the nameplate
Corbitt
Diamond
Diamond Reo
Diamond T
Dodge
Federal
Ford
GMC
Hayes
Hendrickson
International Paystar
International RD Highbinder Cabover
Mack: A, B51, B53, B61, B67, B75, B81, B83, B87, B815, DM800, LJ, LV, Superdog, Thermodyne, R, Superliner, H61, H63, H69
Marmon
Oshkosh
Reo
White 4000
White Freightliner
White GMC Autocar
White 5000 COE
White Road Commander
White Road Boss

As you now drive a new, modern tractor-trailer through Baltimore’s Ft. McHenry Tunnel, you can leave your windows open because the rig is just about as quiet as a pick-up truck. When you recalled driving some of the trucks I just listed, do you remember how loud they used to be? Many truckers thought a tractor’s worth could be measured by how much noise it made. Both the tractor tires and the trailer tires made so much noise, especially going through a tunnel, or a long underpass, that the racket hurt your ears. If the rig was carrying the maximum legal weight, the tire noise was always much greater than when carrying light loads. I’m pretty sure the quiet sounds of the new equipment are wonderful, although I’m not sure because I’m hard of hearing, mostly due to those wonderfully loud old trucks.

Before the Ft. McHenry Tunnel was built, I was traveling north through the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel sometime after midnight, and one of the Maryland Transportation Authority’s policemen was walking the catwalk alongside the roadway. As I approached him, he evidently noticed that I was observing the speed limit, so he looked at me and gave me the sign to “hammer down” by rapidly winding his right arm round-and-round several times. My lumber load was causing the tires to really be singing, and I did notice the cop was wearing ear protection. Many years later, one of those cops, who had become a commercial vehicle inspection officer, told me that his hearing was bad because of all the loud tunnel noises, and that the diesel smoke inside the tunnel was so thick that his body and clothes were filthy at the end of each shift. I inquired about him working in the tunnel by asking him why he did it for so long. He thought about it a few seconds and replied with a question of his own, “Why are you a damned trucker?” I told him I enjoyed being a trucker. He looked at me and said, “Well, I enjoyed it, and that’s why I did it!”

Ed Miller ([email protected]) has more than 40 years of management and ownership experience in the trucking industry. Today, he is a part-time tour bus driver, published author of “A Trucker’s Tale”, and regular contributor to Supply Post. He is a father of three and a grandfather of two, and lives with his wife in Rising Sun, Maryland.